Action Items from Last Meeting – Alison Dishman, FGDC

Annual Report Update – Milo Robinson, FGDC

Milo is the COTR. Tricia has completed the writing, and the
graphic and layout team now has the report. They have edited the
text and done the draft layout. The final version will be sent to FGDC
leadership for review and approval before it goes to the printer.
Printing will take 6 –10 weeks, and then the report will be
distributed.

The original amount of text was too large so we had to abbreviate
the original text. The hard copy will be in similar length to
last year, but the full text will be available in soft copy
online.

Q: How many copies will be printed?A: Last year we had plenty of copies available, we agreed
to cut back on the printing this year. GPO prints. There is
a certain amount of money set aside for printing – the decision on
quantity will be dependant on price because sometimes it costs more to
print less.

Q: How will the report be distributed?A: Last year we sent the hard copy to the Steering
Committee and Coordination Group members. It is a truncated
report to be sent to policy-level officials, conferences and
meetings. If you have a need for the report – we can accommodate
that.

Wetlands SC Update – Bill Wilen, FWS

The Wetlands Subcommittee sent the working draft of the wetlands
standard to the Standards Working Group. We would appreciate your
comments when the standard comes out for review.

The sea level rise model is geo-enabled by the FGDC Digital
Data. After the President mentioned the issue in the State of the
Union address, sea level rise has received a lot more attention.
FWS is very interested in sea level rise due to the many coastal
refuges.

Sea level rise is happening a little faster than it did before but
it is not new and is part of the global process. There are many
factors including glacial melt, tectonics, and isostatic rebounding –
the land is still adjusting from the last ice age. We are part of
geologic time, we have to adapt to sea level rise as we go
forward.

Salt marshes are at the front line of sea level rise. Water rises,
mudflats are lost to low marsh, then to high marsh and the
land.

The FGDC has done a good job of providing excellent examples of how
the data layers can be used. We now need to focus more on the
environmental thematic layers – and show the government the value of
these layers.

Suggestion: The 2007 Annual Report should focus on how
the FGDC agencies contributed to this effort.

Q: How recent is the data you are using? A: Although we have digital data back from the 1970s we
have used NWI digital data that we feel is most reliable. The
Galveston model you were shown today used data from 1991.

CAP Update and Discussion – Gita Urban-Mathieux, FGDC

Q: Do you have a briefing or summary of last year’s
projects?A: It is part of the annual report this year. A lot
of the grants ask for extensions – so there is a fuzzy area – a 2007
grant recipient might not report until 2009.

Gita will post a list of accomplishments on the web – until it is
posted you can view the interim and final reports online.

Approximately 575 awards have been awarded since the program's
inception. David Marks from UNY in Buffalo conducted a study in
2000 that examined lessons learned from the
CAP.

Suggestion: We should look at a broader best practices
approach – things to avoid, and how to get information out to
communities of interest. We could consider a category for the 08
grants to transmit all the lessons learned from the CAP
grants.

Response: The community is so wide – the web is the
best way to transmit lessons learned for now. But when we move to
a FACA – part of the members’ responsibility will be reporting this
information back to their community.

Comment: Category 3 has had a good process over the
last 2 years – NSGIC providing lessons learned to FGDC. Milo
calls quarterly meetings – to check status and see if they need any
help. They are also asked to provide feedback for the upcoming
grant requirements.

Suggestion: We should move the schedule up this year
for the 2008 announcements. Otherwise the awards process runs
into the NSGIC midyear conference. Even starting the CAP two
weeks earlier would make a world of difference for these
folks.

Response: The federal contracts process sometimes takes
the timing out of our hands, but we can try to move it up. We can
try to open the CAP in October, close end of Dec, Jan review period,
maybe complete the process a month earlier. It is hard to do
during the November/December holiday months.

Action 3: Gita Urban-Mathieux will look into having
the 50 States CAP grant on a separate, earlier timeframe than the other
grants to give the awardees time to plan for the NSGIC midyear
conference.

DHS has had to go through a lot of hoops but may be able to provide
funds for 2 extra grants next year.

Action 4: Gita Urban-Mathieux will provide the agencies
information on the proper channels to go through when contributing to
the CAP grant funds.

FACA Update – John Mahoney, USGS

The call for nominations letter is still in the final review process at
DOI. We hope to get the call for nominations out
shortly.

We have spoken with other DOI FACAs to look at lessons
learned.

Action 5: John Mahoney will invite Toni Johnson to
speak to the CG about the Advisory Committee for Water Information’s
(FACA) lessons learned.

There has not been a final decision regarding voting Feds on the
advisory committee. We have a strong sense that the Interior
Office of the Secretary would prefer full federal membership and voting
on the committee. The previously mentioned Water Information
committee has a full mix of members from federal, state, local and
private organizations – which seems to work well.

There is no official FGDC position. We have had discussion
back and forth. We have heard from agencies on the FGDC that they
have found it helpful to have federal membership on their other FACA
committees.

We haven’t come to a final determination on the membership of
working groups and subcommittees but would like to keep the existing
subcommittees and working groups as they are.

We may need to develop new charter language to avoid FACA
issues. When the FACA subcommittees are set up we may need to
revisit the structure of FGDC subcommittees to avoid overlap.

Comment: Part of assessment could examine whether
subcommittee and working group membership should be determined on a
case-by-case basis or all-or-nothing. Changing the membership
might change the roles and responsibilities, products and deliverables
of the groups. We would like to know the answer - it is a
staffing issue that affects the level of support we must
provide.

Suggestion: You could always make the subcommittee and
working group meetings open to the non-feds for half of the day.
The solicitor’s office could inform the chairs what they are allowed to
discuss. Non-feds will understand we have to close the afternoon
session to discuss sensitive topics.

The Participant Statistical Areas Program (PSAP) is being developed
to reflect local input and the needs of a wide range of data
users.

Census categorizes both legal and statistical entities. We are
reexamining the current statistical entities prior to the 2010
Census.

The criteria won’t change but the census tracts could be altered
to:

· Increase the block
groups’ minimum population threshold to 1,200 (cut out largely
unpopulated areas) to improve the reliability of the sample data and
improve mapping.
· Include special land use
tracts – Central Park, NY, etc.
· Include tribal tracts and
block groups
· Allow housing unit counts –
these are more easily verifiable in the field than an actual population
count.
· Census County Divisions
(CCDs) could be eliminated, although they may be legally defined in the
sparsely populated western states – this is up for discussion

The American Community Survey will use this data when publishing its
annual updates.

These proposed criteria will be published in the Federal Register on
April 6, 2007. Discussion and comments are welcomed. The
final criteria will be published in late 2007.